De Blasio Sets a 10-Year Plan for Housing, Putting the Focus on Affordability

New York City will commit $8.2 billion in public funds to a 10-year housing plan that could transform the cityscape from Cypress Hills in Brooklyn to the shores of the Harlem River, while providing affordable homes to thousands of low- to middle-income residents, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Monday.

In embracing a vision for a denser New York, the mayor intends to require, not simply encourage, developers to include affordable units in residential projects in newly rezoned areas around the city. It would be the first time, officials say, that such a mandate would be applied across the board, though many of the details of the requirement have not been decided.

Mr. de Blasio said that with $2.9 billion in state and federal money and more than $30 billion the city expects to attract in private funds, the projected investment to create and maintain affordable units would total more than $41.1 billion over 10 years. The city’s money would fund a host of housing initiatives, including programs that help landlords keep apartments under rent regulation.

Invoking the mayor he has long admired, Mr. de Blasio said that like Fiorello H. La Guardia, he faced a defining housing crisis and that ensuring the city remains affordable demanded a sweeping, sustained effort.

The plan, Mr. de Blasio said, “will be a central pillar in the battle against inequality.”

He announced his plan at a news conference in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, at a construction site for a residential building where half the units will rent at affordable rates.

In his plan to allow more high-rise towers and rejuvenate neglected neighborhoods, Mr. de Blasio is leaning heavily on the same techniques used by his predecessor, Michael R. Bloomberg, to seed an urban housing boom. But Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, has a broader agenda.

Still, the 115-page policy outline released by City Hall on Monday left many questions.

For example, Mr. de Blasio’s plan to require affordable units in new projects in exchange for bigger buildings is a major departure from the Bloomberg years, when such actions were voluntary. But how far the city will push developers will not be determined until after a study by the planning department, and the new policy would not come into effect until at least the middle of next year.

Some cities such as Boston and Denver already require projects over a certain size to set aside affordable units. But housing experts say there is a downside — the requirement can reduce or eliminate profits and dissuade developers from building.

Mayoral aides conceded on Monday that many of their ideas to create affordable housing needed to be extensively studied before they could be enacted.

Despite Mr. de Blasio’s pledge to “drive a hard bargain” with developers, his plan contained few ideas that would rattle the real-estate industry. That was both a concession to the city’s dependence on developers to increase its housing stock for a growing population of mixed incomes, and a reflection of the more pragmatic, less fiery approach Mr. de Blasio has adopted since taking office in January. The housing announcement comes amid what could be a defining few days for the mayor’s first year. Last week he announced a significant labor deal with the city teachers’ union, and on Thursday, he will unveil his first budget, a test of his fiscal and policy priorities.

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Mr. de Blasio, at a newly renovated building of affordable apartments in the Bronx, describes his plan to fight inequality.CreditMichael Appleton for The New York Times

The mayor’s announcement was the culmination of a campaign promise to make the city more livable for poor and middle-class New Yorkers, many of whom find it increasingly difficult to pay their rent. He has pinned his housing plan on the goal of creating or maintaining 200,000 affordable units over the next 10 years — 80,000 new units and 120,000 existing ones preserved — which would surpass the considerable investment in affordable housing over Mayor Bloomberg’s three terms. Mr. Bloomberg invested more than $5.3 billion of city money in such housing, and leveraged more than three times that much from other sources, to preserve or build 165,000 units over 12 years.

Mr. de Blasio also wants new units to be available to more households with extremely low incomes — under about $25,000 a year for a family of four — that he feels have been left out of qualifying for apartments in the past.

City, state and federal money is needed to both spur development deals for new affordable units and maintain existing affordable apartments.

Housing data shows that nearly a third of the city’s households who rent pay over 50 percent of their income in rent and utilities, well above the 30 percent federal standard of affordability.

The city offers tax credits and other incentives for new construction. And it helps preserve rent-stabilized units by giving property owners financial assistance to keep their buildings from turning market-rate when government subsidies expire or when the owners need to renovate or refinance.

Still, more rent-regulated apartments are lost to deregulation than new ones are built.

Administration officials have said the plan was the product of coordination among 13 city agencies and conversations with more than 200 developers, housing advocates, labor leaders and others with a stake in development.

The de Blasio administration wants to invest more in affordable housing than Mr. Bloomberg did, and in less time. But Mr. de Blasio needs to find new resources to make up for cuts in federal subsidy programs. He will also need to negotiate with the state government over increases in tax credit and bond programs that help attract private money and cobble together development deals.

As with his efforts on expanding prekindergarten, Mr. de Blasio would need the cooperation of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and the State Legislature to support his housing agenda. While rezoning and expediting construction are under the city’s purview, the state government controls subsidy programs and rent regulations for about a million rent-regulated apartments in the city.

And affordable housing can be just as contentious, pitting the concerns of residents and developers against those of affordable housing advocates. A coalition of affordable housing advocates is lobbying for setting aside as much as 50 percent of all units in new residential projects for low- and moderate-income residents.

Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, an influential industry group, issued a statement on Monday saying the plan provides “a realistic road map for solutions.”

“This has got to be a living plan that gets altered,” he had said in an interview last week. “Everything, including the kitchen sink, has to be thrown on the table for possible experimentation.”

Correction:May 5, 2014

An earlier version of this article misstated the percentage of affordable units in a building being constructed in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. It will have 50 percent of units at affordable rents, not 20 percent.

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